Nasalrod: Saturday, Dec. 1

One big, happy punk-rock family.

[OFF-KILTER PUNK] Looks can be deceiving,
and the members of Nasalrod are some deceptive motherfuckers. Gathered
together in the fastidiously beige North Portland living room of bassist
Kat Knows, you’d think the band was about to pose for a family
Christmas photo rather than go into the garage and rehearse a set of
twisted, convulsive art-punk. Individually, the musicians defy
superficial judgments. Knows’ bright, dimpled smile hides a history of
growling her guts out in local grindcore bands. Guitarist Justin Stimson
has the warm demeanor and prodigious facial hair of a placid folk
singer, which probably explains why he wears a mask while warbling like a
psychotic Muppet in prog-y weirdos Marmits. And the older guy in the
recliner, who looks like the friendly next-door neighbor from a TV
sitcom? That’s Tim Leitch, aka Spit Stix, the longest-tenured drummer
for infamous L.A. hardcore mongrels Fear.

It’s little surprise,
then, that when the group talks about the reaction it hopes to draw
from audiences through its furious, confrontational live shows, the
answer is not what you’d expect.

“We played up in
Olympia, and I remember people coming up to us and saying, ‘You guys
exude joy and love.’ And I thought, wow, that’s a great compliment,”
Leitch says. “That’s such a great thing to have achieved. Because that’s
what we are between the lines: We’re all really good people.”

Truly,
Nasalrod is a group of four convivial nutcases who can’t seem to get
enough of each other. Two of them first met right here, four years ago,
in the home the band refers to as “the Crazy Cat Lady House.” (Knows
once lived with three roommates who each owned a cat.) At a house party,
singer Jeffrey “Chairman” Couch, frontman for the bizarre rock ensemble
DRATS!!!, ventured into the basement and lent his distinctive
voice—part Jello Biafra, part Cheap Trick’s Robin Zander—to a jam
session between Knows and then-drummer Matt Ashman. The chemistry was
immediate. “Some people thought it was a band already,” Knows says, “so
it made sense to start a band.”

Weeks later, the
newly formed trio played its first official show, where it recruited
Stimson to play guitar. At the time, Stimson had been playing with
Leitch in his synth-driven Lickity project. When he saw the four-piece
Nasalrod for the first time, Leitch was blown away. He oversaw the
production of On a Trainset, the band’s self-released debut, and when Ashman moved to Seattle last year, Leitch practically begged to be his replacement.

Steward,
Nasalrod’s new EP, is the group’s first recording with Leitch, and it
continues expanding the band’s off-center concoction of contorted guitar
figures, shape-shifting rhythms and Couch’s sneering, bellowing vocals.
But Nasalrod is an act that comes alive onstage—or, perhaps more
accurately, offstage. Live, Couch often goes flying into the crowd,
throwing high kicks in the audience’s face and trying to incite a
frenzy. True to the band’s congenial nature, though, the human-tornado
routine isn’t meant to antagonize, but to whip up a sense of communal
abandon.

“If you can get
comfortable with being the first ass in the room to act like a wild
fool, everyone else very quickly gets wild, too,” Stimson says. “It’s
such an awesome, contagious phenomenon.”

“This is sort of a
pie-in-the-face business anyway,” Couch adds. “You have to be OK with
getting the pie in the face. That’s the deal.” <a href="http://nasalrod.bandcamp.com/album/steward">Steward by Nasalrod</a>